NEW DELHI: Agitated over recent suspension of IAS officer Durga Sakthi Nagpal in Uttar Pradesh, representatives of three All India Services associations have demanded changes in rules to check such "arbitrary" and "malafide" abuse of power by state governments.

"It is relevant to bring to your kind attention that since early 1990s more than 175 IAS officers have been suspended of which more than 100 IAS officers have been suspended in the State of Uttar Pradesh alone," the representatives said.

"These facts, which are matters of record, speaks for itself the misuse, rather abuse of this delegated power to the state government, whose duty is to protect the honest, sincere and public spirited officers in their discharge of their official public duties," said Sanjay R Bhoos Reddy, Secretary of IAS officers' association in a memorandum given to Narayanasamy here yesterday.

The failure of Government of India to intervene in this matter would render the working of the All India Services as well as of other Public Servants virtually impossible and would eventually result in a state of anarchy and destroy the very fabric of rule of law that was intended by the framers of the Constitution, he said.

"Needless to say that arbitrary, ad-hoc, baseless and malafide suspensions of the AIS officers by the State Governments, who are not the Appointing Authority, of the AIS officers has led to lot of anguish and resentment among the AIS officers across the country," the memorandum said.

The associations demanded a mandatory provision for the governments to issue a 'show cause notice' with a minimum period of 15 days to any officer before suspension and for states to compulsorily seek prior concurrence of the Government of India to suspend the officer giving the facts and the grounds for suspension.

IPS officers' association secretary Pankaj Kumar Singh said analysis of various instances of suspension indicates that quite often tough action by a particular officer in public interest and against a powerful vested interest group, had preceded his or her suspension.

The suspension orders in such cases were issued based on some unrelated instances of so called 'breach of public interest', Singh said.